OdinYggd

Yeah. For it to work at that scale the PV substrate would have to be made of a material with a broad spectral response, able to convert most of the wavelengths that are less than ideal for PV conversion into wavelengths that can be while at the same time removing the heat by either re-emitting the excess energy or having it get absorbed into kicking up electrons. Not sure if such a material exists. That and a little googling revealed another group already created a PV cell that reacts to both heat and light, enabling best of both worlds conversions. It does seem like your lab is set up more for theoretical research than any kind of practical stuff though. I'd have to take an idea like that over to Corning Incorporated, since their R&D labs are set up for practical applications development.

It's a type of engine. Just the chamber on it was leaky, so it was operating at only a fraction of the pressure it needed to make to self-sustain. However ignition took place anyway, and not only did I write in my design log that day that it has potential applications for mosquito control, but after the test it had gotten too hot to touch barehanded. Not bad for only 35 PSI when it should really have been reaching around 160 PSI for proper operation. Lately the progress has stopped again, I've been busy with other things instead of working on it. But I have a good idea now for how to fix the leak and get the chamber pressure up, so it's only a matter of time until I get going with it and it comes to life. You've really sent me for a loop though. I haven't done anything serious with optics since the Photonics course I took in high school, and my certificates from that have long since expired. ...with the doppler cooling effect you are studying, what form does the energy take when it comes out. Could that technology be integrated into a photovoltaic cell such that the PV cell becomes self-cooling to a degree where it no longer gets hot? Or does it only work with the energy intensity of a focused laser beam.

Level 6 overall. America 3, Germany 3, Japan 2, Britian 2, Russia 0. It's starting to get really grindy though at this level, and the novelty is fast giving way to the annoyance of the map glitch constantly crashing the game.

Wouldn't be interested in the credit anyway. Just a small token of appreciation in the form of a grant to be used completing the development of one of my other inventions- a mechanism which has been four years in R&D and cost me every penny I can spare. And the best part is it almost works, last time a full up test cycle took place it filled the testing area with smoke from it starting to function. It's just leaky.

Oh right, you told us about this before. Hmm, I'd have to think about that one if I have any viable experiments that would require an optics lab.

Granted. I actually used to post here all the time, over a hundred pages of this thread ago and for many months that were lost by the forum wipe. Unfortunately most of that time was lost, and the last counting thread will not be replaced anytime soon. I wish these guys would stop shooting me down in Warthunder.

Was just too good to pass up.

Hey Trekette, help me move this ladder. Let's build a box around rage097 made out of ladders, so that when he wakes up he is trapped inside a cube of ladders and can't get away.

Granted. Instead everyone starts talking about Brittany Spears, and how I wish someone would actually make a multiplayer plugin so I wouldn't have to close so many threads.

Oh I've got loads of ideas in tons of topics. What kind of lab is it though? Since it'd be pointless to pitch them ideas that they aren't equipped to deal with. Chemistry? Nuclear materials? Biology? I'm an all around tinkerer of sorts, but budget constraints usually force me to only go hands on with mechanical and electrical projects. That doesn't stop me from doing theoretical up to nuclear physics at least. Just my chemistry background is weak, my high school cheated me out of that requirement instead of actually giving me a proper class on it.

Does a car as old as I am with enough mileage to reach the moon and be partway back count? I drove that car for 4 years before it finally lost its transmission and had to be scrapped.

Want an old lab furnacne for the collection? I've got a Cenco-Cooley electric furnace, tested to 1800F in working order. It sits on a skid in the storage area of the machine shop, where it was used at irregular intervals for heat treating stuff. They're trying to unload it, so it's available for scrap prices. Also where do you work, I might have some interesting business proposals for them on R&D matters that I lack the investment to develop myself. I fell through the floor once. Was in the attic and stepped off the established path, right onto a soft spot. Ripped through the sheetrock ceiling below, and landed in my parents bed. Wasn't at all hurt, but it took me several days to repair the ceiling in their room. That's going to be quite the challenge. Last time I broke anything was close to 20 years ago now. Broke an arm falling off a chair in the kitchen when I was 3, broke a finger roughhousing behind the couch when I was 4, etc etc. And I live dangerously, Jeb would be proud of much of what I've accomplished that most people shouldn't try at home.

This has been discussed countless times. Squad has already stated they will not be adding it any time soon, so if it happens it will be through a plugin. There are two competing approaches to the time warp problem. The first is a voting system, where everyone is prompted for parameters regarding their maximum warp capability and how long they can safely warp. After a set period of time anyone who has not answered is assumed to be afk, and maximum warp with infinite duration is entered. Lowest common denominator then rules for when the warp takes place, with a cooldown in between to prevent abuse. Second approach is to allow everyone to warp independantly. For this approach the server must also keep track of timestamps on a per player basis, and you can only see the real position of players who are situated at the same time as you are. Otherwise you can only see a 'ghost' indicator showing where they are at in their timeframe. This approach has the disadvantage of complexity, and could quickly become confusing for people because they now have to keep track of their time relative to the rest of the universe. Ultimately none of these approaches will be tested for two simple reasons: There is currently no known method of controlling multiple vessels simultaneously outside of physics range, and in physics range it is still clunky and unstable. The sheer volume of code required to do this is immense, quite possibly more than any single plugin has amassed to date. Most skilled plugin developers already know the complications and problems likely to be encountered, and choose to not attempt this because of the sheer amount of time that would be spent getting even a basic system to work. And there's still the problem of you almost certainly can't have more than 2-4 people on a server at a time without all of the calculations you would be doing griding the clients to a standstill.

Playability, and difficulty in making an effective AI. If the AI was actually any good, beginners would quickly learn to hate the game because the AI would be too good for them to beat. At the same time, making an effective AI is no easy task. So since it is given a fairly low priority in the development cycle what results is an AI that is theoretically functional, but in practice can be quickly and consistently overcome by even basic tactics.

Because I've got a flyswatter, and if I start seeing really bad creepypasta in here I'll definately use it.

Does thinking your the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? Cause if it does, maybe I am. ~Will Smith. And no. I spent my time on the funny farm, I'm not 100% sane either. Ultimate rejection too, getting sent home from the funny farm for not being crazy enough.

Cause after a while you get back to normal (mostly anyway). I did a few allnighters too. My record was 36 hours straight. Course I wasn't entirely sane to begin with.

Pretty sure they would, because typical worst case scenario data corruption disables the unit and it has to be wiped and reloaded. Modern engineers tend to be forced to do things the cheap way as much as possible because of the forces of money and corporate politics. In real world industrial robots, the operating system and vital config info is stored on either a hard drive or flash chip- I actually recently modified one that ran from a floppy disc to utilize a CompactFlash card as a hard drive for storing its OS and configuration because the floppy drive kept wearing out. They do eventually get messed up, but a trained technician will take mere hours at most to repair one when that happens assuming that proper backups were being kept- and offline maintenance is often needed to produce those backups. As far as CPU and RAM goes, no for the most part ordinary hardware is used. The only real difference is it is packaged into casings that are more durable than your household computer, in my environment these are designed to resist dust and coolant infiltration and small impacts such as a forklift bumping it while moving a skid of material. Typically the actual hardware stats reflect a low end system for the time period it was built, again the result of the forces of money and corporates. I've upgraded a few of them over the years. For cost reasons redundancy is only added for applications where a failure resulting in downtime is unacceptable. Most of the time the machine is wired and configured such that if anything goes wrong it performs an automatic emergency stop, and then sits there unusable with the error that caused it on the screen until a technician arrives to put the trouble right and get it going again. That's my job, figuring out just what happened and making sure it doesn't happen again. Where I work, you do not press the big red button unless it is an actual emergency. It won't explode, but you will have to hear it from me about how pressing that button runs the risk of hardware damage from the servo amplifiers being abruptly forced offline without necessarily being commanded to stop first.

Most SMART-capable hard drives automatically go offline for brief periods to perform selftests even in current hardware and have done so since SMART was first concieved. You can also induce this level of testing by command, but it is best not to unless you have your OS running from a different hard drive. Also like I said they might not have to shut down completely. But best practice is to not do CPU intensive tasks while realtime operations are in progress. So to that effect it would be best if the robot waited until it was idle to perform such work.

Irrelevant when I can bullseye you from LKO with a MOAB (Orange tank + guidance thrusters). You can run but you can't hide from 36 tons of heat-seeking rocket fuel tank that will happily detonate on impact and blow your mecha into tiny bits, in my mercy. Cool looking okay. Useful, probably not. Though he might have applications as a flare launcher to detect weather conditions prior to launching a satellite. He can't fly can he, and he's too odd-shaped to attach to a rocket. Humans must sleep periodically to allow their bodies to revitalize, but also to allow the brain to untangle the web of memories produced that day. Failure to do so leads to sanity problems. I would think that a robot would also likely need a similar resting cycle, although they would not necessarily have to become unconscious for it a period of reduced physical activity would still allow processing power to be utilized for upkeep tasks like defragmenting the hard drive and internal status assessment via offline selftest.

Oh that's what it was I forgot at the store earlier. Went grocery shopping and forgot to get a toblerone to sample.

Good point. I am glad to see this thread moving along at a modest pace though, a few posts an hour with a fairly reasonable conversation taking place in it.

Finally got the hang of using the Catalina. I bought a new crew, spammed it for a bit with a biplane, and put all the points from it into gunner accuracy. So now when I fly my catalina, the gun accuracy is level 12. People try to get near my Catalina and as I bank to aim for a target, the autoguns lock on and pew pew pew no survivors. It was funny watching someone rage when their beaufighter got taken out by that.

Beware, for I am watching. Even if I don't respond right away. I do have a wife and a household to look after you know. Sometimes I gotta take care of things. I'll vouch for your piloting skill. Even with somewhere around 500ms lag last night you were still flying circles around people. I was barely keeping up, and I was running at only 50ms.

It seemed oddly fitting, since it's all the odd bits and pieces of this forum that don't really fit anywhere else. Plus I know I'll sometimes visit such places to obtain special bits of hardware on a budget needed to make fancy contraptions and different kinds of experiments. They're not always the kind of places people expect them to be.